Kuwait has hanged five prisoners, including a convicted drug dealer from Sri Lanka and an inmate convicted over the bombing of a Shiite mosque in 2015 that killed 27 people and was claimed by the Islamic State group.
The inmates were hanged at the Central Prison, Kuwait’s Public Prosecution said in a statement. Prosecutors said the five include the man convicted in the mosque attack, Abdulrahman Sabah Idan, three people convicted of murder and a convicted drug dealer from Sri Lanka. One of the convicted murderers was Egyptian, another was Kuwaiti.
The 2015 bombing occurred during midday Friday prayers inside the mosque, one of Kuwait’s oldest for Shiites. The Islamic State group, which at the time controlled large areas in both Syria and Iraq, claimed the attack, which also wounded over 220 people. The Sunni extremist group views Shiites as apostates deserving of death.
It was the first militant attack in Kuwait in more than two decades. The attack was likely intended to foment unrest between Kuwait’s Sunni and Shiite Muslim populations, but instead it was widely condemned and re-awakened a sense of national solidarity not seen since Saddam Hussein’s 1990 invasion of the country.